Your colleague John Harwood at least was able to be intellectually honest enough to slap you back in place about your “hacked” poll nonsense, in his open letter. Harwood, the Chief Washington Correspondent for CNBC and Senior Contributing Writer for the Wall Street Journal, at least had to admit that the poll was not hacked and disagreed with the decision to pull the poll. Even though he was more honest, his rationale in the letter shows a glaring disregard for understanding the issue:
He lacks the support needed to win the GOP nomination, and would even if the media covered him as heavily as we cover Rudy Giuliani. Why? Because Paul's views--respectable, well-articulated and sincerely held as they are--are plainly out of step with the mainstream sentiment of the party he is running in.
Paul’s views are not that far out of the mainstream as Harwood would think. In fact, his views are more conservative and republican than the traditional neo-conservative views. The true fact is that the neo-cons have hijacked the Republican Party and if Harwood spent more time covering that than assuming traditional republicanism is dead, he would better serve his readers. Also, coverage goes a lot further than Mr. Harwood gives credit for. I disagree that covering Paul at the rate of Giuliani would have no effect. It would present polar opposite positions and that is what democracy should be embracing, not the notion that the press merely decides what is and what is not worth reporting. Why is it that Dr. Paul consistently gets the greatest applause? Why is it that he wins every online poll? Why is it that he out gains even top-tier candidates such as McCain? Those are the stories that should be covered. That would get Dr. Paul’s message out on par with the “blow up the world” guys. Then let people decide! That is democracy!
I commend Harwood for standing up to the absurdity of Wastler’s positions but in the end, he has made a tragic assumption. He has assumed that the PEOPLE who make up the GOP agree with the POWERS that operate in it. The truth is that they do not. The president has approval ratings so low, that it is clear that the traditional neo-conservative positions are simple not tenable any more. The politics of fear are over. Sure, you still have a handful of sheep who think that they need to trade their civil liberties for the illusion of security. There is a small pocket of people who still bow down at the altar of fear and somehow think that the people who have proven incapable of protecting us are the right ones for the job. But even those people might have a change in heart if the mainstream press would simply do their job of reporting all sides and opinions. Either way, the majority of the republican base does not necessarily embrace the neo-conservative message of killing more people. They are clamoring for a variety of opinions so they can make the best informed decision.
Instead what they get is wall-to-wall coverage of RudyMcRomney. Instead what they get is the same opinion, regurgitated over and over again by each candidate. They all want more war. They all want less civil liberties. They all turn a blind eye to the problems in this country while there eyes are focused on what other countries they can blow up. All except one, Ron Paul. He has a different message. He has a message that deviates from the script and because of that, people like John Harwood have mistakenly decided that it is the role of the press to decide whether the people of a party would want to hear and support that message. He has a message that is different from the machine and because of that people like Allen Wastler, think that they get to decide what you need to know and what you don’t. They had a press like that in the old Soviet Union once.
Allen Wastler needs to lose his job because he has decided that objectivity no longer belongs in a free and open press. Beyond that, he brags about it. He openly spits in the faces of those that he pretends to serve. The press used to be about the truth and the pursuit of it. Now it is an echo chamber for the preformed opinions of a few who would ram down the throats of the many, what they feel they need to know. They no longer care if they are persuasive because they already know they are no longer believable. They no longer care to even appear credible because they have decided what the truth is for themselves, regardless of the veracity of it. Edward R. Murrow must be spinning in his grave.
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